WORTH: Alice Herald Redefines New Zealand Luxury for an American Audience
Words by Cait Bazemore
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" With sculptural precision and ethical intent, the New Zealand jeweler is building a quiet but unmistakable presence in the U.S. fine jewelry market.
Breaking into the American luxury jewelry market usually takes a decade. Alice Herald did it in twelve months. When the New Zealand designer unveiled her work at the 2024 Couture show in Las Vegas, her pieces—rooted in classical form and modern restraint—stood out in a sea of ornamentation. Herald’s background in sculpture lends her collections a sense of proportion rarely seen in contemporary jewelry. At the same time, her commitment to local materials and ethical sourcing grounds her in something more profound than design trends. Her debut wasn’t just a commercial milestone; it was a quiet assertion that independent craftsmanship can still shape the global luxury conversation.
By Couture 2025—just one year after her initial U.S. debut—Herald was making significant headway with her presence and prominence in the U.S. market. This created a ripple effect, propelling her even further on her own soil and emphasizing the importance of the American market on a global scale. At the Couture Design Awards, Herald came runner-up in the Best in Gold category thanks to her exclusive use of recycled Australasian gold and native New Zealand alluvial gold—gold that has washed down from mountains by rivers and concentrated in gravel beds, particularly in the South Island’s Otago and West Coast regions. Herald has also taken home two other accolades in 2025 at New Zealand’s Best in Design Awards and the Fashion Quarterly Awards as Designer of the Year.
Honors aside, Alice Herald is a good human and an artist through and through. Her background was not initially in jewelry-making but in sculpture, which continues to inform her approach to design with a 360-degree sensibility. She swears by a particular artist’s process, which involves isolating herself at her second home by the sea with only her dogs as companions while she designs a new collection.
In addition, Herald is dedicated to conscious and sustainable business practices, sourcing local materials that are ethically mined and partnering with local suppliers and artisans whenever possible. For Herald, she prefers her role to be the creative, the visionary, the designer, and to surround herself with the best possible experts. The result is knowing every element of her supply chain and collaborating with them to bring her artistic concepts to life. As a brand, Herald presents as a one-woman show, but behind this great woman is a well-nurtured group of suppliers, craftspeople, and other industry professionals who have been and will continue to be a part of the long-term vision for her brand.
Herald is also passionate about giving back to her community and causes near and dear to her heart. She’s collaborated with the Mint Charitable Trust, a New Zealand charity established to support individuals with intellectual disabilities and their families. Closer to home, Herald and her sister are BRCA positive and have lost their mother, Marceline, to breast cancer. Marceline was instrumental in propelling Herald to where it is today. She encouraged her to attend Central Saint Martins, one of the most renowned arts and design schools in the world, and insisted that you must never give up the childlike sense of curiosity that often gets lost in adulthood.
Perhaps Herald’s highest achievement of 2025 is the debut of her first Aphrodite capsule, inspired by the famous Renaissance painting, The Birth of Venus, by Sandro Botticelli, with a portion of sales going toward prominent cancer research organizations in each of her core markets.
Ancient Inspiration, Modern Sensibility
Roman and Greek art and design have long been a source of inspiration for Herald. The launch of her Istoria collection (Istoria meaning story in Greek) marked her U.S. debut at Couture in 2024, with the line drawing inspiration from the classical period of Greek mythology and architecture, particularly the columns of the Doric and Ionic Orders and coffered domed ceilings of ancient Rome. Herald followed this with her Deities collection, unveiled at Couture earlier this year. The flagship piece within the line is her Light My Fire pinky ring, inspired by the fire-bearing Titan Prometheus. This design earned her second place in the Best in Gold category at the show’s award ceremony—her first international accolade.
The initial installment of the Aphrodite capsule lives as a subset within the Deities collection and was not only informed by Herald’s fascination with Greco-Roman art and history but also by her oceanside design studio. Greek mythology states that Aphrodite is born of the seafoam, which Herald saw washing up on the shores during her daily beach walks with her dogs and immediately conjured the image of Aphrodite in her mind. The first set of designs in the capsule focuses on the feminine shape of Aphrodite herself, emphasizing the female form in correlation with the charitable component of the collection supporting breast cancer research. However, next year, we’ll get a second interpretation of Aphrodite incorporating a new set of native materials, including New Zealand Jade (or pounamu as called by the indigenous people) and New Zealand wood.
With the current Aphrodite capsule, 10% of proceeds go to the Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in New Zealand for online sales, to Breast Cancer Now for U.K. sales, and to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation for U.S. sales. Yes, with Herald’s expansion into the U.S. market comes her own dedicated point of sale at a newly established multi-brand gallery in the heart of Manhattan called Casa Tres.
An Official Footprint in the U.S.
Casa Tres was founded on the principle of helping global high-end and fine jewelry brands like Herald to have a full-service partner and U.S. footprint. More than a showroom, factory, or logistics provider, Casa Tres unites all three under a single umbrella, giving designers the infrastructure to scale sustainably while preserving creative freedom. Founder Mirta de Gisbert is a luxury industry veteran. Before launching her own jewelry consultancy and Casa Tres, de Gisbert worked at Edelman and Sotheby’s, as well as a variety of fashion and jewelry houses, including Burberry, Jessica McCormack, and Paula Mendoza.
Herald’s trajectory feels deliberate, not meteoric. Her forthcoming residency at Bergdorf Goodman and partnership with Casa Tres signal a thoughtful expansion rather than a rush toward scale. Every piece still begins the same way—sketched by hand near the sea, imagined as much for its story as its shine.
In an industry often driven by spectacle, Alice Herald’s work reminds us that refinement can still speak softly and be heard. "